engadget has posted some spy photos of the Android driven HTC Dream. Thanks to Jah for the link.

For the more technical minded among you, here are some engineering drawings of the same device.

"The Android Guys managed to get their mitts on the first real drawings of the T-Mobile G1. The images reveal a lot more information that we’ve only been able to speculate on up until now.

The most notable part of the T-Mobile G1 is the “chin”. It’s located towards the bottom of the handset where the jogball and buttons are located. This design doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. The slide up display and the chin alone will drive case makers mad! I hope for the sake of the G1’s longevity that the outer shell is well-built from scratch-resistant material.

Other exterior markings include “with Google” located on the back of the G1, while the HTC logo and the T-Mobile myFaves logo live underneath the slide up display. As the Android Guys pointed out, I’m happy to see HTC branded on the Dream phone since they’re the first to go to market so heck yes, they deserve to show off their brand.

The most important part of the engineering diagram is the sizing. Based on the dimensions given, we can calculate that the thickness of the G1 is approximately 0.64-inches or 16.35mm. This isn’t bad considering the iPhone is 12.3mm thick, without a flip-out screen section. We’re still unsure of the display’s dimensions, but we can hope that it’ll at least match the iPhoneís 3.5-inch screen." 

Palm's buzzworthy Treo Pro is merely a flotation device for the troubled company as it readies its next smartphone, coming in 2009, an analyst says.

Since 2006, Palm has declined in U.S. market share each year. And it won't be the Treo Pro that reverses this trend; rather, Palm's next new offering -- about which little is known -- is the company's last hope, said Tero Kuittinen, a telecom analyst at Global Crown Capital.

"At the moment, Palm is just trying to keep the company going before this hopefully revolutionary new device arrives," he said.

Just two years ago, Palm was the leader in the U.S. smartphone market, but since then the company has fallen behind its major competitors HTC and Research In Motion (RIM). And Apple is hot on Palm's heels. 

Kuittinen said the Treo Pro's major downfall is its pricing in the United States, where Palm is only offering the smartphone for $549 -- unlocked and without carrier subsidy. He explained that the handset's lack of subsidy will turn off many consumers, especially when taking into account Apple's recently slashed prices of the tremendously popular iPhone 3G... The full text from Analyst: Palm Needs a Savior, and Treo Pro Won't Cut It is here.

Apple and other manufacturers of multi-faceted cell phones (aka "smartphones") perhaps should not count on tech-savvy young people as their principal market. When it comes to cell phone usage at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), a study shows practicality is in and high tech is out.

A marketing research class at the UNH Whittemore School of Business and Economics conducted a survey of 707 undergraduate students. When asked about the top three uses for their cell phone, 91 percent said talking, 87 percent said text messaging and 80 percent said alarm clock.

"UNH students want pragmatic and practical feature on their cell phones," said Chuck Martin, adjunct professor of marketing at UNH who taught the marketing research class. "Students use their cell phones to make phone calls, text message, and as an alarm clock. Features such as music, global positioning satellite (GPS), email, and video messaging were among the lowest used features on current cell phones, and the research indicates that this isn't changing anytime soon."

Regarding cell phones of the future, 68 percent of students said the top feature they would like is longer battery life, while 58 percent said they want it to be waterproof. The features that the fewest number of students want are video surveillance, video projection and video editing... More at cellular-news.

Android Market - Google's Answer to AppStore? is a very informative new article over at Mobile Evolution- "Google recently announced on their blog how they intend to promote Apps for the Android operating system. The "store" will be referred to as the "Android Market" which will be more of a repository, or archive, of applications available for the platform. They did not spell out how commerce will be accomplished--just that free apps (and maybe free demos?) will expect support for now, with more decisions to be made later. This news is welcomed by developers who are frustrated with the semi-closed nature of the AppStore, but does pose some critical issues in its deployment. In this post, I will compare and contrast some of the positives and negatives of the Android Market (as it has been announced), the AppStore, and the current existing smartphone application distribution system.

The Android Market has a lot of positives:

1) Developers do not need to pay $99 to be listed on the store, plus Google does not restrict or limit developers from participating.
2) Since the developer self-uploads, the applications can be released and updated in real-time with no long approval queues.
3) There will be an icon on the Android-based phones so that users can access the 'market' directly from device, getting apps directly in front of all customers..."